Vital Nodes at the 6th European Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans

Posted: 25th June 2019

The 6th European Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans took place on the 17th and 18th of June in Groningen. The objective of the conference was to provide support to innovative and active cities within the SUMP context.

Vital Nodes featured in the program of the conference in the parallel session dedicated to Multi-level governance and integrated planning at the regional scale, during which a presentation on the project was given by Kevin van der Linden (Rijkswaterstaat). Other presentations featured in the session were given by EUROCITIES, CERTH (Centre for Research and Technology Hellas), the City of Ljiubljana, and the City of Groningen.

The Vital Nodes presentation shared insights on a number of recommendations and future needs, identified by the project, for a more effective and sustainable integration of urban nodes into the TEN-T corridors focusing on freight logistics:

  • Follow the corridor approach more systematically;
  • Improve cooperation and harmonization across borders;
  • Cooperate more intensively across institutions (public and private), build trust;
  • Share data – and transport capacities – consistent data for adequate planning;
  • Consult with Urban Nodes and within Urban Nodes (bottlenecks within urban nodes – awareness raising);
  • Establish fact-based funding approach more widely;
  • Plan more actively for modal shift (in freight) – integrated approach;
  • Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP) for ‘ functional urban areas’;
  • Build competence, facilitate exchange of good practices;
  • Network resilience as key criterium (e.g. for traffic network management).

The open discussion with the audience touched upon several issues of urban accessibility. Participants also shared views on the need for Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans at regional/Functional Urban Area level: a particularly interesting contribution to this discussion was the presentation by the City of Ljubljana about their regional SUMP, which is one of the major outcomes of the Vital Nods project so far. Furthermore, representatives of other urban nodes attending the session illustrated their struggle to integrate spatial planning with infrastructure and mobility developments on different scale levels.